Soot clouds melting Himalayan glaciers

Fumes from wood fires and from diesel engines accelerate melting, Indian scientists warn By Randeep Ramesh and Suzanne Goldenberg, The Observer, Sunday 4 October 2009 Glaciers in the Himalayas and the Tibetan plateau that feed the river systems of almost half the world’s people are melting faster because of the effects of clouds of soot […]

Toxic chemical found in air outside 15 U.S. schools

By Blake Morrison and Brad Heath, USA TODAY Outside 15 schools in eight states, government regulators have found elevated levels of a substance that — in a more potent form — was also used as a chemical weapon during World War I. Those findings, based on samples collected for the Environmental Protection Agency, mark the […]

Seaweed invasion plagues France's pristine Brittany

Hillion, France (AFP) Sept 28, 2009 – Hillion is a picture-postcard Breton town with grey stone houses, a pretty granite church and long sandy beaches. But the seaside idyll has been ruined by mounds of rotting seaweed that have settled across swathes of France’s northwestern coast, giving off a potentially deadly gas. “It’s a never-ending […]

Skulls found on Mafia ship laden with radioactive waste

Cameras sent down to investigate vessel appear to show human remains By Michael Day in Milan Pressure is growing on the Italian government to act over revelations that 30 or more ships with radioactive cargoes, deliberately sunk by the Mafia, may be polluting the Mediterranean. The Calabrian region in the south of the country last […]

Toxic algae blooms increasing in Midwest U.S.

By ROBERT IMRIE (AP) WAUSAU, Wis. — Waterways across the upper Midwest are increasingly plagued with ugly, smelly and potentially deadly blue-green algae, bloomed by drought and fertilizer runoffs from farm fields, that’s killed dozens of dogs and sickened many people. Aquatic biologists say it’s a problem that falls somewhere between a human health concern […]

Endocrine-disrupting chemicals found in breast milk

  ScienceDaily (Sep. 25, 2009) — A comparison of breast milk samples from Denmark and Finland revealed a significant difference in environmental chemicals which have previously been implicated in testicular cancer or in adversely affecting development of the fetal testis in humans and animals. This finding is published in the International Journal of Andrology. In […]

Graph of the Day: Population Change of Athabasca River Caribou, 1993-2004

Woodland caribou is one of the species likely to be extirpated from regions subjected to Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD) development. Caribou declines across Alberta have been correlated with the level of industrial development within their ranges.43 In the past ten years, the East Side Athabasca River caribou herd, whose range overlaps much of the […]

Environmental impacts of oil sands development in Alberta

Posted by Nate Hagens at The Oil Drum …The liquid tailings, a by product of the oil sands mining process, contain naphthenic acids, unrecovered hydrocarbons and trace metals, making it toxic to aquatic organisms21 and mammals22. Operators are required to store tailings waste on site in large containment dykes because the water is too toxic […]

Pesticide additive widespread in Canada groundwater

Another contaminant found in Canadian groundwater samples may join the list of environmental substances that could be harmful to humans and the environment, according to recent study results published in the September 2009 issue of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. The newest potential threat to human health and the environment is fluorochemicals known as perfluorinated phosphoric […]

Health ills abound as farm runoff fouls wells

By CHARLES DUHIGG, Published: September 17, 2009 MORRISON, Wis. — All it took was an early thaw for the drinking water here to become unsafe. There are 41,000 dairy cows in Brown County, which includes Morrison, and they produce more than 260 million gallons of manure each year, much of which is spread on nearby […]

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